


Voices in the Black

by DoesEulerDreamofComplexSheep



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:56:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29066934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoesEulerDreamofComplexSheep/pseuds/DoesEulerDreamofComplexSheep
Summary: Just a short for Flash Fiction Friday 85.@flashfictionfridayofficialRiver spends a watch at the helm ofSerenity.
Kudos: 3





	Voices in the Black

River yawned from her seat on the left side of the bridge. She stretched backward, her shoulders pressing into the soft fleece of the flight chair. She pulled the blanket draped over her shoulders close and hugged her knees to her chest. The ship, _Serenity_ , was settled in for the night, asleep like the rest of her crew. Most of the heaters were turned off to give engines a little less load, and the air was chilly.

She let her eyes quickly drift over the instruments stretched out in an arc around her. It wasn't necessary, really. Outside the windscreen in front of her stretched the long, inky expanse of space. Pinpricks of starlight filled the sweeping vista, but otherwise they were alone right now. River's presence on the bridge was pro forma, or if she was feeling especially truthsome, for her benefit more than any need.

The young copilot had lived so many more lives than most had, even at her age, and she had as many lifetimes of coping mechanisms that she'd built, and spending her nights on watch was one of them. Most nights she sat up here on the bridge, her weather eye on the merry arrangement of lights and screens, letting her sleep come in the rigging over the cargo bay during the bustle of their day. 

Kaylee and Simon would often remind her that she could just go to her bunk, that the autopilot would sing of any trouble in Mal's cabin like an automatonic canary. River would always smile appreciatively and tell them she'd probably stay there, just in case.

Mal and Zoe knew. She'd heard it, felt the words fill up the space between them like a wave, her consciousness filled with their meaning as clear as if she had heard the words. They understood better than most, maybe better than any, that in the stillness of the night was when whispers came calling. 

They weren't anything she wasn't used to, those hushed voices wafting through the black. They were always there, just a part of the background radiation of the 'verse. She picked them up like a scope picked up the metal bodies of the ships that sometimes crossed their paths, and River was as used to hushing their voices as she was the sound of her own breathing. 

Sometimes it was harder though, some voices could rise up like a wave in a storm. It happened when whoever spoke the voice was angry, the volume growing from a whisper to a shriek. Those voices were hard to push into the back of her mind, it was why the reapers had affected her so much when they had crossed her path.

She had told Simon about it once. He had been kind and tried to explain his thoughts in his own way. Tried to doctor her. It wasn't his fault, not really, how useless his words often were. He struggled to understand the space between them more than most. It was probably his genius. Mal or Jane would see something that they couldn't grasp and it was easy to accept; one more mystery in the 'verse, but Simon hated the idea of not understanding. River wondered how he tolerated her. His little sister, a cypher written in a language never spoken, foreign runes drawn in invisible ink on a tome locked in a chest. That's what she would always be to him.

She reached her hand up and caught a few renegade strands of wavy black hair in the crook of her finger, pulling them back into place over her ear with a sigh. Tonight was one of the nights River needed the distraction of the _Serenity_. The hardest voices to handle weren't the infinite sea of whispers shifting over the 'verse like a wind, it was the tiny pool of voices she could recognize without thinking. 

Wash's unspoken last words as the light behind his eyes flickered out. _I wish I could tell Zoe I love her one more time._

The lament of Book as his chest fell still from his final breath. _Lord, forgive me for being glad to see my enemy die. Forgive my joy at killing him_.

Mr. Universe, the children of Miranda; those were the whispers that River could never explain to anybody why they tortured her so. The voices she wished she could have saved. _Serenity_ was River's lone confidant to that pain, always there to give her an escape. Like Mal had told her that stormy afternoon many long months ago, a home. She smiled, remembering the words that had helped her realize how much she needed _Serenity_.

They had just taken off after finishing _Serenity's_ repairs. Mal sat opposite her, his side of the bridge still decorated with toy dinosaurs and silly plastic palm trees. Wash's death was far too raw to imagine touching the monument to someone Mal loved so much. As the winds buffeted the ship on their ascent Mal had looked at her with the solemnity and truth of a preacher at the altar, and he spoke about his first rule as a captain.

"Love," he said with conviction. "You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love and she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down, tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home."

River could still feel the same sense of peace and warmth that his words had helped her discover. She ran her fingertips over the smooth, cold metal of the console beside her, committing her fingertips to memorizing the touch as one might remember the skin of a lover. 

_Serenity_ , she thought to herself with a quiet smile. _Home_.


End file.
